ence the occasional
mutterings of warning which come from the depths of the burning
craters, and the showers of ashes which are frequently sifted over
their houses and fields. Never having heard of Herculaneum or Pompeii,
they do not associate any possible danger with the fleecy cloud of
smoke which floats in pleasant weather from the broken summit of
Kluchefskoi, or the low thunderings by which its smaller, but equally
dangerous, neighbour asserts its wakefulness during the long winter
nights. Another century may perhaps elapse without bringing any
serious disaster upon the little village; but after hearing the
Kluchefskoi volcano rumble at a distance of sixty miles, and seeing
the dense volumes of black vapour which it occasionally emitted, I
felt entirely satisfied to give its volcanic majesty a wide berth, and
wondered at the boldness of the Kamchadals in selecting such a site
for their settlement.

The Kluchefskoi is one of the highest as well as one of the most
uninterruptedly active volcanoes in all the great volcanic chain of
the North Pacific. Since the seventeenth century very few years have
elapsed without an eruption of greater or less violence, and even
now, at irregular intervals of a few months, it bursts into flame and
scatters ashes over the whole width of the peninsula and on both seas.
The snow in winter is frequently so covered with ashes for twenty-five
miles around Kluchei that travel upon sledges becomes almost
impossible. Many years ago, according to the accounts of the natives,
there was an eruption of terrible magnificence. It began in the middle
of a clear, dark winter's night, with loud thunderings and tremblings
of the earth, which startled the inhabitants of Kluchei from their
sleep and brought them in affright to their doors. Far up in the dark
winter's sky, 16,000 feet above their heads, blazed a column of lurid
flame from the crater, crowned by a great volume of fire-lighted
vapour. Amid loud rumblings, and dull reverberations from the
interior, the molten lava began to flow in broad fiery rivers down the
snow-covered mountain side, until for half the distance to its base it
was one glowing mass of fire which lighted, up the villages of Kristi,
Kazerefski, and Kluchei like the sun, and illuminated the whole
country within a radius of twenty-five miles. This eruption is said to
have scattered ashes over the peninsula for three hundred versts to a
depth of an inch and a half.

The lava